Publications by authors named "Bettina S Husebo"
Background: Age-friendly environments intend to promote active ageing by facilitating social, mental, and physical participation. This could potentially delay the onset of chronic complex conditions, enabling people to live longer independently at home, and prevent loneliness. This study investigates a community-based living environment in Norway called Helgetun and aims to explore how it can facilitate active ageing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Proper symptom management, informal caregiver support, and service innovation are required to reduce dementia care burden. The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the multicomponent LIVE (Learning, Innovation, Volunteering, Empowerment) intervention on caregiver experience of the self-perceived care situation, coordinator performance, and informal care time.
Research Design And Methods: We conducted a 24-month multicomponent, stepped-wedge randomized control trial including dyads of people ≥65 years with mild-to-moderate dementia with minimum weekly contact with their informal caregivers in Norway.
Background: Pain medication may have an impact on the quality of life (QoL) in persons with dementia, but may also influence care dependency and daily functioning. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of regularly scheduled paracetamol on care dependency and daily functioning in persons with advanced dementia with low QoL living in long-term care facilities.
Methods: The Quality of life and Paracetamol In advanced Dementia (Q-PID) study was a (block) randomized double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial with paracetamol and placebo across seventeen long-term care facilities across 9 care organizations in the western region of the Netherlands.
Objective: This study aims to identify whether pain and dementia-related behavior are associated with different types of activities in nursing home residents, controlled for dementia severity.
Design: Cross-sectional baseline data from the multicomponent cluster randomized controlled COSMOS trial (acronym for Communication, Systematic pain treatment, Medication review, Organization of activities, and Safety).
Setting And Participants: A total of 723 patients from 33 Norwegian nursing homes with 67 units (clusters).
Pain and frailty are closely linked. Chronic pain is a risk factor for frailty, and frailty is a risk factor for pain. People living with frailty also commonly have cognitive impairment, which can make assessment of pain and monitoring of pain management even more difficult.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- This study examines the prevalence and severity of oral symptoms in nursing home patients from admission to the day of death, highlighting the importance of oral health care in this population.
- A cohort of 696 patients was observed, showing an increase in patients with severe oral symptoms, particularly xerostomia, dysphagia, and mastication problems, by the time of death.
- The findings stress the need for better oral palliative care practices, especially for those with dementia, who exhibited a higher frequency of these issues.
Background: Social alarms are considered an appropriate technology to ensure the safety and independence of older adults, but limited research has been conducted on their actual use. We, therefore, explored the access, experiences, and use of social alarms among home-bound people with dementia and their informal caregivers (dyads).
Methods: From May 2019 to October 2021, the LIVE@Home.
Background: One of the most pressing issues in our society is the provision of proper care and treatment for the growing global health challenge of ageing. Assistive Technology and Telecare (ATT) is a key component in facilitation of safer, longer, and independent living for people with dementia (PwD) and has the potential to extend valuable care and support for caregivers globally. The objective of this study was to identify promotors and barriers to implementation and adoption of ATT for PwD and their informal (family and friends) and formal (healthcare professionals) caregivers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To investigate the association between clinical, demographic, and organizational factors and formal (health professionals) and informal (relatives) resource utilization in nursing home patients with and without dementia.
Methods: Baseline data from the multicomponent cluster randomized control COSMOS trial including 33 Norwegian nursing homes and 723 residents with and without dementia. Nursing home staff (n = 117) participated as proxy raters to approximate formal and informal resource use in daily care.
Background: Active ageing is described as the process of optimizing health, empowerment, and security to enhance the quality of life in the rapidly growing population of older adults. Meanwhile, multimorbidity and neurological disorders, such as Parkinson's disease (PD), lead to global public health and resource limitations. We introduce a novel user-centered paradigm of ageing based on wearable-driven artificial intelligence (AI) that may harness the autonomy and independence that accompany functional limitation or disability, and possibly elevate life expectancy in older adults and people with PD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Music-based intervention has been used as first-line non-pharmacological treatment to improve cognitive function for people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia in clinical practice. However, evidence regarding the effect of music-based intervention on general cognitive function as well as subdomains of cognitive functions in these individuals is scarce.
Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of music-based interventions on a wide range of cognitive functions in people with MCI or dementia.
Background: There is limited knowledge regarding the process of deprescribing psychotropic drugs to people with dementia (PwD) conducted by general practitioners (GP). We investigated the impact of a multicomponent intervention, emphasizing medication reviews, on psychotropic drugs and behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) in home-dwelling PwD and quantified change in patient-GP communication evaluated by their informal caregivers.
Methods: LIVE@Home.
Background: Many people with dementia (PwD) live and die with undiagnosed and untreated pain and are no longer able to report their suffering. Several pain assessment tools have been developed, tested, and implemented in clinical practice, but nursing home patients are reported to be still in pain. Clinicians and research groups worldwide are seeking novel approaches to encode the prediction, prevalence, and associations to pain in PwD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To investigate the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD).
Design: Prospective cohort study (PAN.DEM) nested within the halted parent trial (LIVE@Home.
Age and Emotional Distress during COVID-19: Findings from Two Waves of the Norwegian Citizen Panel.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
September 2021
Unlabelled: Older adults face the highest risk of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. We investigated a one-year change in emotions and factors associated with emotional distress immediately after the onset of the pandemic, with emphasis on older age.
Methods: The online Norwegian Citizen Panel includes participants drawn randomly from the Norwegian Population Registry.
Background: COVID-19 isolated home-dwelling people with dementia (PwD) from home care services, respite care, and daytime activities. We aimed to investigate the consequences of these restrictions on informal (family, friends) and formal (homecare staff) resource utilization among co-residing (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Nearly 19 million people across OECD countries are living with dementia, and millions of family caregivers are affected by the disease. The costs of informal care are estimated to represent 40-75% of the total dementia cost exceeding formal care time and medical costs.
Objective: To conduct a systematic review to evaluate the methodological quality and factors associated with high informal care hours per month that increase societal costs, and to identify what type of interventions may alleviate the entire burden of informal and formal caregiving.
Factors associated with access to assistive technology and telecare in home-dwelling people with dementia: baseline data from the LIVE@Home.Path trial.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak
September 2021
Background: There is a knowledge gap regarding factors that may influence the access to different devices for home-dwelling people with dementia (PwD). The aim of this study was to identify different assistive technology and telecare (ATT) devices installed in the home and key factors associated with access to such technology.
Methods: The baseline data came from the LIVE@Home.
Background: The majority of people with dementia have behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), including depression, anxiety and agitation. These may be elicited or aggravated by disrupted circadian rhythms. Bright light treatment (BLT) is a promising non-pharmacological approach to the management of BPSD, but previous research has yielded mixed results.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMunicipal end-of-life care for older home-dwelling patients with cancer is a complex matter requiring healthcare professionals (HCPs) to recognize gender differences in a social, historical and organizational context. A qualitative approach was chosen to explore and identify HCPs value-based principles and organizational conditions promoting dignity-preserving care practice for these women. HCPs recognized the importance of sheltering the women's identity, their sense of being home and acknowledged their personal preferences as value-based principles, whereas creating a flexible culture of care, establishing a functional professional collaboration and developing individualized plans of care, were crucial organizational conditions influencing the practice of dignity-preserving care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Antihypertensive medication use and sleep problems are highly prevalent in nursing home patients. While it is hypothesized that blood pressure and antihypertensive medication use can affect sleep, this has not been investigated in depth in this population. Alongside a multicomponent intervention including a systematic medication review, we aimed to investigate the longitudinal association between antihypertensive medication use, blood pressure and day- and night-time sleep over 4 months.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: We aimed to describe pain, use of analgesics and quality of life (QoL) in people with dementia admitted to a Norwegian nursing home (NH), and to explore if and how pain was associated with their QoL when adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, other health conditions and use of analgesics.
Method: A total of 953 Norwegian NH residents with dementia (mean age 84.0, SD 7.